


Disappear

by Mottlemoth



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU - Severus Survived, Angst, Comfort Sex, Depression and Start of Recovery, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Survivor Guilt, hopeful and happy ending, protective severus, rated F for Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-30 07:24:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15091946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mottlemoth/pseuds/Mottlemoth
Summary: After the war, Harry breaks. Someone who understands is there to start picking up the pieces.





	Disappear

After it's all over, Harry breaks.

The war is done; the world is rejoicing. People are glad. The dead are buried and gone from sight. Everyone's talking about a new age. Everyone's telling Harry with excitement that they're free now, and he watches them as they smile at him, hundreds of them, strangers on the street every time he leaves the house, running up to thank him as if he did something a thousand other people didn't do, and he's trying to take any of it in past the surface.

He finds himself looking at other people like they're pictures on a screen.

It frightens him.

It feels like they're not really real - or like he's not. They're reaching for him, but there's nothing there for them to find.

War is over, and Harry's breaking along every fault line he's ever had.

Within days he realises there's a problem. As the days turn into weeks, it's getting worse. The Weasleys are all sleeping soundly, but Harry can't manage more than two hours. He walks for miles around The Burrow at night; none of them know. It makes him feel for a while like he's meant to. Nobody knows where he is, and somehow that makes it easier to cope with the feelings. Being by himself brings a feeling of cold, quiet calm.

He can't bear them all smiling and making plans.

Strangers keep congratulating him, shaking him by the hand like nobody died.

Two months somehow pass.

Harry starts thinking he was meant to die.

He starts thinking it's the only thing that makes sense - it's why he feels empty and ungrateful and guilty. People are dead who should be alive, and he can't even smile for their relatives. He feels like he belongs with the dead, like they would understand somehow. He doesn't understand the living anymore.

Ron and Hermione get engaged. Harry doesn't feel a thing. He stands and smiles painfully in a corner at their party, trying his hardest, and he can feel people looking at him. He's ruining it. They all want to be happy in their new world, and there he is: the old world, standing there with a plastic cup of punch like he shouldn't be dead. He can't bring himself to chat to anyone. When he tries, they ask him what he's up to these days.

The truth is that he's spoiling it, and he knows it. Everyone wants to forget. Harry can't.

A few more weeks go by, each one of them just like the last, and Harry isn't eating. He doesn't get hungry anymore. It distresses him when Mrs Weasley plates up food for him, trying to include him, trying to make him smile, and he knows they're all silently begging him to stop being like this. They want him to celebrate and rebuild with them. All he wants to do is walk alone at night to somewhere he can sit by himself, hide beneath some old tree in the darkness, and hold his knees to his chest in silence.

He almost wishes he could go back.

A year ago. Two years ago. Three years ago. Fighting with the Order, all of them around him - heroes - brave people - they were all there together, and he'd wanted to make them proud. He wanted to show them he could pull his weight. Looking back, Harry realises he wasn't really fighting to get rid of Voldemort. He was just with them all, and it was his normal life. He felt like he had a purpose and a reason. He wasn't just some kid who'd grown up in a cupboard. He'd enjoyed it - being part of them.

Voldemort's gone. So are many of the heroes who fought him.

Some of them made it. They're gone in a different way, though. They've returned to their homes and their families. They're settling into that new world they fought so hard for. They all told Harry to reach for them if he needed them, but he doesn't know how to do that: send an owl? _"Hi Sirius, hi Remus. How are things? How are the dogs? I have no purpose."_

He can't bring himself to pull anyone out of their happiness and into his grief.

He wants them to be happy. He wants them to move on and live.

It's not their fault he's stuck.

 

* * *

 

His rescuer arrives unannounced.

Harry's woken mid-afternoon by a nervous Ron. They've been letting him sleep later and later recently; it's the only thing that brings him much relief. He knows they talk about him while he sleeps, and he knows that they worry. He wants to beg them not to.

"Mate, there's... a visitor to see you. Told him you're asleep, but... he insisted he'd wait. Mum's not sure what to do with him. He's - just sitting there in the kitchen."

Harry dresses himself in silence, anxiously buttoning his jeans.

_Why are you here?_

_Why would you come in person?_

_Did they tell you I’m not alright? Did they realise it was you they should send for?_

He steps into the kitchen a few minutes later, quiet as a ghost. His visitor is sitting at the table, ignoring a mug of Mrs Weasley's very milky tea.

As Harry steps into the kitchen, Severus glances up.

He takes one look - and his expression sets like granite.

The fight between Severus and the Weasleys is vicious.

"And for how many weeks has it been _'obvious'_ there's something wrong with him?"

Harry's never heard Severus like this. He's seen him annoyed, seen him alarmed - but never like this.

"For _God's sake -_ a single _glance_ \- and he's neither sleeping at night nor eating? You all considered that _perfectly normal,_ did you? All waiting for him to perk up and put on a happy face?"

Mrs Weasley starts to cry. She's trying, she says. She's trying to make things feel normal for Harry. All of them are trying.

"That is _Harry Potter!"_ Severus rages, white in the face. "He has _never lived a normal life!_ Did you expect him to develop the skill spontaneously? Or were you all merely hoping?"

Harry sits amongst the argument, numb, the only person in the living room now who isn't in tears or shouting. Everyone's defending Mrs Weasley. Everyone's appalled with Severus.

At last, with a stiff back and a shaking voice, Arthur Weasley asks him firmly to please leave the house.

Harry stands up from his chair. He walks towards Severus before any of them can move, and numbly takes hold of his arm.

"Take me too," he murmurs. "Please."

Severus looks down at him. Their eyes lock, and Harry's heart lurches into his throat.

Severus's arms slides around his back.

To the cries of the Weasleys, the two of them apparate away.

 

* * *

 

A muggle hotel in Edinburgh. The room is small - there’s barely room for the bed and the wardrobe. It's everything Harry needs. Nothing here reminds him of the wizarding world - what he is - what they are - it's just a room with curtains that draw shut, a door that locks with a bolt not a charm, and room service that brings them food to eat. Severus doesn't ask what he wants. He just orders things and puts them somewhere. If Harry eats them, he eats them. If he doesn't, the staff take them away.

For three days, Harry talks and cries. He says the things he couldn't bear to say to Mrs Weasley when she asked if he was alright. He says the things he feels like he shouldn't say to anyone. Severus listens to him say them, unafraid. Harry doesn't notice at what point Severus starts to hold him. Human touch just arises between them, like it did before.

And it starts to feel like it did when they were in the Order.

It starts to feel like those quiet nights with just the two of them, long months of working on anything and everything that came their way. Snape turned into Severus in those months. Harry turned into a man. He wasn't sitting there in uniform anymore, giving Severus essays to grade, winning points for his house. He was in jeans and a jumper, desperate to learn, desperate to prove he was as brave as any of the others - ready to work, ready to work on _anything,_ ready to make Severus understand that he wasn't a child any longer.

The hotel feels like that again, without the work. It feels like those rare nights of rest when Severus would pour him a glass of wine without asking.

It feels like the night it all began.

Harry's always remembered that night - working together on notes for the new batch of veritaserum, when a hand brushed across his back. It was a touch that some part of Harry understood at once, as if he’d been waiting for it all his life. Then there were arms around him, Severus's mouth on his own - a stumble to a bed in the darkness - cool sheets, gasping kisses, slick fingers relaxing him slowly for Severus's cock.

They didn't talk.

It just happened perfectly. It unfolded around them like it was meant to be.

Harry knew it was happening to the others, too. They all paired off at night. It was emotion and grief pouring out of them all, and the wounds felt better against someone else's skin. He knew some of the Order were screwing anyone who glanced at them. It was how they coped.

But Harry only ever went to Severus.

They stole into each other's rooms at night. They didn't talk; they just stripped each other, kissed and slowly fucked, tight sounds, soft sounds, pleasure for comfort. Pleasure for calm. Severus got good at making him come - gentle biting, breathed moans in his ear, pulling Harry onto his lap to ride him. Severus's body became more familiar than his own. Harry began to stay with him afterwards to sleep, warm together, enjoying the press of their bare skin and the gentle hands caressing his back as he slept. He suspected people knew they'd paired off to do this. They all stopped trying to ask him into their rooms at night.

They knew he belonged to Severus.

Now they're in a hotel somewhere in Edinburgh, and nobody in the world knows where they are.

They sleep clothed on top of the bed together for a few hours at a time, then wake up to talk some more. Severus tells Harry things that would scare him, if anything scared him anymore. He tells him things that come straight from the soul, boiling and black, full of pain, and tells him it was like this the first time too - an ex-Death Eater, trying to find some sense of connection to the new world. Severus knows this feeling. He knows what it’s like to have somehow escaped the ranks of the dead. He was prepared for it this time; he knew that if he survived again, it would feel like this. He’s walked this road before.

He can’t promise Harry it will end, but he says it becomes more comfortable with time.

Three nights alone together, and Harry's eating a little more.

He doesn't want to leave the room yet. Sometimes he wakes up from sleep to find himself nestled against Severus’s chest, with Severus quietly stroking his hair. Those moments feel more calming than anything anyone has given him in weeks.

It's on the fifth night, after Harry's bath and midway through conversation, that they reach for each other again.

They're talking on the bed, lying side-by-side, when a natural pause comes - and Severus reaches over to kiss Harry as if he asked. They strip out of their clothes, leave them on the floor and slide under the covers together, kissing, shaking.

It's just like before.

Gentle fingers, stretching - Severus's heavy cock - his weight is warm and comforting, and his back feels firm under Harry’s hands. Harry wraps his legs around Severus's waist and just breathes for a while, petting the older man's hair with his fingers, shivering as Severus moves in him slowly. As he relaxes, and Severus can take him a little deeper, the pleasure starts to come - soft at first and small, a shadow of what it was.

But Severus is patient.

He kisses Harry, strokes his skin. Soft bites. Murmuring to him, quiet praise, saying ‘good boy’ and breathing that he’s warm inside. Harry stirs, restless and blushing, wanting to ride Severus like they used to, and Severus understands his quiet shifting at once. He eases Harry gently onto his lap. They find their way back together, trembling, their bodies joining as Harry grips his shoulders, starts to rock - just like it was. Just like it always was. Severus's body is familiar and warm and close. His voice is soft, his fingertips gentle as they skim up and down Harry's sides. Feeling full is like feeling safe. Harry rocks over and over, and it feels like they've been having gentle sex for hours, just moving together, breathing, pleasure rising like heat in Harry’s lower back. He doesn't want to stop.

He feels better, fucking Severus. He feels safe with those dark eyes watching him enjoy something.

And for just a while, he forgets it all.

He forgets who he's meant to be. He forgets he was supposed to be a saviour and ended up a broken wreck. He forgets that everyone is worried about him and it’s his fault. He forgets his guilt that he can’t be happy just yet, forgets his anger that they’ve all so quickly forgotten the dead, pushes it all away - all of it - and concentrates on just belonging to someone else for a while.

Severus's hands stroke to his hips. They hold him there, gentle and protective, as they help him to move - pale thumbs circling his hip-bones slowly, black eyes gazing up into his, taking in his face as they fuck.

Harry's thinking about breaking his wand in half. He's thinking about disappearing, and pretending it was all a dream - one long and weird and desperate dream. He's only twenty-three. Nobody else's life has started properly by twenty-three. He can start again.

 _They_ can start again.

Gripping Severus with his thighs, feeling his lover shift beneath him and exhale, Harry's heart aches. _All I want to do is vanish and fuck you._ They could go somewhere, some quiet corner of the world that nobody knows. He could get the sort of job he imagined having when he was a child. He could work happily in a coffee shop abroad, come home to Severus at night, talk and eat something together, kiss and go to bed and slowly fuck. Make each other moan. Make each other feel normal and real again.

The truth is that the world ended. In its ashes, Harry doesn't have much. He isn't meant to be here anymore. He’s not sure if he'll ever stop feeling like that - but he's found a strange peace now he knows it's alright. He wants to be with someone else who shouldn't be here anymore.

He wants to fuck, make each other safe, and disappear.

 


End file.
